Dirty Bertie 26 – Aliens!

Alan MacDonald's Dirty Bertie - Aliens is three short funny stories for 6 year olds about a boy who is always completely certain and almost always wrong.

What happens

In the first one, Bertie sees a streak of light through his friend Eugene's dad's telescope and decides it's a spaceship. A man at the library who gives talks about UFOs does not say it wasn't. That's quite enough encouragement.

So Bertie flashes a torch at the sky. He spells out a message in stones in the flower bed, in capitals, so there can be no confusion. Next morning the only footprints are the dog's.

Then the doorbell goes.

In the second story he's taken birdwatching, mostly to escape a whole day with Angela Nicely from next door. In the third he opens his school report before his parents can, reads the words messy, idle and never listens, and posts it into a postbox.

Which solves the problem right up until somebody says the words Parents' Evening.

The joke is the same shape every time and it's a good one. Bertie's plan is watertight. Bertie explains the plan. The plan collapses. Bertie is not remotely discouraged.

Each story runs to four short chapters, so this is three sittings rather than one, which matters a lot at six. Sentences are short, there's dialogue on nearly every page, and Miss Boot does most of her teaching in capital letters.

Your reader doesn't need to have read any of the others first. Nothing carries over except Bertie, his friends Darren and Eugene, and the general state of his nose.

The one thing to weigh up is whether the humour is theirs. It's a series that trades on being grubby and getting told off, and it doesn't apologise for a word of it. Some children think that's the funniest thing going. Some are unmoved.

What to read next

If the three-stories shape suits them, there's another three stories in Bogeys, which opens with Bertie down under his desk hunting for his rubber while Miss Boot asks him to repeat what she has just said.